


I'm a Musician (Not a Mathematician)

by Anonymous



Category: Singin' in the Rain
Genre: Marriage, Multi, Threesome, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-10
Updated: 2009-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:31:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The second time was the time that Don got upset.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm a Musician (Not a Mathematician)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for marginalia in the 2006 NYR challenge.

The second time was the time that Don got upset.

He woke up in the morning, leapt out of bed, landed ungracefully and thudded to the floor in a tangle of threadbare blankets.

"Um," he said.

"Wha'?" Cosmo had managed to sleep through the entire racket—"it's a gift," he said loftily whenever Don questioned his uncanny ability to fall and stay asleep under any conditions—but the removal of all the blankets available to them in Rocky Sea, Colorado was an indignity, apparently, not to be borne. "'S _cold_." He reached vaguely out and wiggled his fingers. "Donnie."

"Er," Don said.

Cosmo rolled over. "Don," he said. "Are you sick or something?"

"Uh," Don said. He sounded as if he wasn't sure whether he should start running for the hills—despite his state of undress, the Colorado winter, and his pitiful lack of a sense of direction—or throw up; which, if you think about it, is quite a lot to pack in a single syllable, but Don had always been a talented kind of guy. Cosmo opened an eye.

"Don," he said again, and yawned.

"Cosmo," Don said, and his voice was a half-octave higher than it should have been.

"Don," Cosmo said.

"I," Don said. "I, I, I..."

"_Don_."

Don sighed and climbed gingerly back into bed. Cosmo yanked most of the blankets over himself and promptly began dozing again; Don propped himself up on an elbow and watched Cosmo's bare chest move as he breathed until the alarm went off.

"It doesn't," he said as Cosmos tried to get his cowlick to lay flat, "_matter_, right?"

"What doesn't?" Cosmo said cheerfully and swiped at the top of his head with the comb again. "Oh, the hell with it, I'm always going to look like I did when I was thirteen," he said, giving up and reaching for his coat. "Do you think if we chopped the piano up for kindling Mr. Hassenpfesser would notice?"

"Given how out-of-tune it was, probably not," Don said, and bumped his hip against Cosmo's as they switched places in front of the mirror. He fussed with the collar of his shirt as Cosmo checked through his pockets for his gloves.

"Then I say we do it," Cosmo said, glancing out the window. "Oh, jumping Jehosaphat, Don, it's snowing again."

"In that case," Don said, and cleared his throat, "let's do it."

Cosmo looked at him through his lashes for a moment. "Why, Mr. Lockwood," he said coyly, "a girl might get the wrong idea about you."

"They'd be the right ones, baby," Don shot back, and Cosmo laughed, and all was right with the world again.

The first time, they pretended it hadn't happened.

The third time, it was just one more Don-and-Cosmo thing.

The seventh time, Cosmo kissed Don. They'd never done that before.

The eighteenth time, Don kissed back.

The thirty-third time was the night after Don had had dinner with Lina Lamont, and Cosmo was especially noisy that night, bucking his hips under Don's mouth, moaning against Don's palm, saying _yes_ and _more_ and _please_ and _Don_ as if the words were made of ice and he wanted to get them off his tongue as quickly as possible.

In the morning, their landlady knocked on their door in her dressing-gown. "I told you boys, _no overnight guests_," she said and Don smiled charmingly at her.

"But Mrs. Gregorivich, we didn't have any," he said, and her eyes widened.

"Guests or no guests, keep it down," she snapped, and stomped back down the stairs, the pink sateen of her robe flapping around her knees.

Cosmo took in a lungful of air, but before he could say anything, Don grinned at him. "Guess we'd better find a new landlady," he said. "One that doesn't mind noise."

Cosmo swallowed, and then grinned back. "I'll be able to stop hiding my true self," he said and flung a hand against his forehead. "I'll admit to the secret I've been hiding all these years, Don, I'll _write that symphony_."

The one-hundred-and-forty-fifth time was the night before Don's wedding.

"Well," Don said after.

"Yeah," Cosmo agreed, and fell asleep before he could think of anything else to say.

The one-hundred-and-forty-sixth time was the morning before Don's wedding.

The one-hundred-and-forty-seventh time was the morning after.

Don was unshaven and his stubble scratched the insides of Cosmo's thighs and burned against the skin of his lower back and his mouth tasted different—salty and musky, slick from the oysters from the wedding reception. It wasn't the same, but it was close enough if Cosmo kept his eyes shut.

The one-hundred-and-forty-eighth time wasn't for another six months.

Cosmo, for the first time since the twenty-third time, was quiet the whole time, gasping sharply once when Don leaned his full weight on him, and sinking his teeth into Don's shoulder instead of crying out.

"You okay?" Don asked later, when the sweat on their bodies had cooled.

Cosmo nodded.

"We okay?"

"Yeah," Cosmo said, and it was the truth, or as close as he was going to get.

The one-hundred-and-forty-ninth time was only three weeks later.

Don showed up with Kathy in tow, bearing chop suey, General Tso's chicken, and beer. "Hi," he said cheerfully. "Move the junk, Cos," and Cosmo picked up the cluttered magazines and newspapers on his table automatically.

"God, I'm filthy," Kathy said. "Mind if I use your shower?" She kissed his cheek and pressed the bottles of beer into his hands before he could respond.

"We had the dream sequence today," Don explained, as Kathy vanished into the bathroom. "The one in the desert, you know the—"

"Yeah," Cosmo said. "With the veils?"

"Yeah," Don said. "The sand got everywhere." Cosmo nodded, and reached for the plates. Don was sorting through the silverware in his drawer. "This," he said a moment later, "is pitiful." He held up a fistful of mismatched spoons and knives, some with their handles so bent they were nearly impossible to hold.

"I'm a starving artist," Cosmo reminded him.

"Right, because R.F. pays you peanuts," Don said, dropping a handful of forks on the table.

"Hey, don't knock the man," Cosmo said. "Give him some credit, Don, the peanuts are roasted, at least." Don laughed, and suddenly Cosmo found Don's mouth pressed against his.

"You don't have to—" Don said, and Kathy swept back in, wrapped in Cosmo's ancient plaid bathrobe.

"Hope you don't mind," she said, her hair dripping onto his feet as she hugged him. Don flicked a stray lock off her forehead, and she smiled at him, and snatched the beers out of his hands, struggling with the top until Don took it back with a long-suffering sigh.

"Mi casa es su casa," Cosmo said grandly, throwing his arms wide. "What's mine is yours, Kathy darling."

"Good," she said. "And what's ours is yours, you know that, right?" Her smile had turned a little fragile at the edges.

"I know where your spare keys are," Cosmo agreed. "I was planning on selling all the contents of your house as a first anniversary gift, what do you say?"

"Anything to get rid of that hideous mirror that my mother sent as a wedding gift," Kathy said. "You haven't seen it, have you. It's—" she waved her hands, "the frame, Cosmo, the _frame_. Every time I check my lipstick in that mirror, I think a kitten dies somewhere." Don snorted and flopped down into a chair. Kathy perched on his lap automatically.

"It's not so bad," Don offered.

"This," Kathy said, tucking her head under his chin, "is why I have forbidden you to buy anything for our home ever again. You have no taste whatsoever."

"You put Tabasco on scrambled eggs, honey, I'm not sure I should trust your judgement."

"But I sure can kiss," she said, and tugged his head down to demonstrate.

Cosmo turned away and busied himself dumping the Chinese food onto plates; at least they were clean. "Cos?" Don's voice was soft, almost uncertain, and for a moment, he wasn't sure he'd even heard it right; he had never heard Don sound so nervous, not even before their first time on a vaudeville stage together.

"Don?" he said, turning around.

Kathy smiled at him and held out her hand. She was still in Don's lap, and her arm was slung around his neck, but if he perched on the table just there and leaned forward, he would be at the perfect angle to kiss her neck and Don's hand could be on his shoulder, fingers in his hair, and maybe—

He moved toward the two of them, in his tiny, filthy kitchen, glowing as if they'd soaked up the lights from the soundstage, and his fingers were abruptly full of music and warm, like they'd never been before, and he felt himself begin to wake up, and knew he never wanted to sleep like that again.

The first time with Kathy was the only time they counted; they ran out of numbers, the three of them, together.


End file.
